The leaders and my fellow bloggers at the John Locke Foundation's blog The Locker Room have discussed the questionable value -- if not legality -- of incentive plans offered by every level of government to woo Dell Computers to North Carolina.
Now that the state, Forsyth County, and Winston-Salem have allocated megabucks of incentives for Dell's new plant -- over $37 million of it local -- the Winston-Salem Journal reported Sunday that modification to a high school next to the plant site could cost as much as an additional $4.4 million:
About $900,000 of that money would be the direct cost of creating a new driveway system to get students onto campus off of Glenn Hi Road and closing the entrance from Union Cross Road. Officials with the computer company have said they want to keep students off the road that Dell trucks will use every day. The other $3.5 million would be used to undo some of the damage done to the campus by the road.
The new driveway would go through at least one fully lighted and irrigated football field, would destroy some tennis courts and would put the entrance of the school far from the principal's office.
A $5.6 million capital spending plan for the school has already swelled to $7.9 million due to inflation and "computer changes". Some on the school board are not happy, calling increased expenditures "not fiscally responsible."
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